The world’s fastest runner has nothing on a four-legged mechanism built by a Massachusetts robotics manufacturer.
According to Boston Dynamics, which is based out of Waltham, the company’s Cheetah Robot sprinted at more than 28 miles-per-hour, setting a new land speed record for legged-robots and leaving the record held by 100-meter-dash Olympian Usain Bolt in the dust.
Data from the International Association of Athletics Federations shows that when Bolt ran the 100 meter in 2009, he set a new world record of 9.58 seconds. His average speed was 23.35 mph, but his peak speed for the best 20 meter split was 27.78 mph, according to the data.
The Cheetah Robot’s fastest 20 meter split was 28.3 mph, according to a press release sent out on Thursday by Boston Dynamics.
To best the robots previous record of 18-mph, the engineers increased the cheetah’s running speed and “refined the control algorithms that coordinate the robot’s leg and back motions” while also increasing the installed power.
The company notes, however, that the mechanical cat-like device runs on a treadmill without wind drag and has an off-board power supply that it doesn’t carry on it’s back.
“So Bolt is still the superior athlete,” the company wrote in a press release.
While the advances are impressive, engineers that worked on the project are looking to kick it up a notch.
“Our real goal is to create a robot that moves untethered outdoors while it runs fast,” said Dr. Alfred Rizzi, chief robotics scientist at Boston Dynamics.
According to Rizzi, the company is currently working on an outdoor version of Cheetah, which they dubbed WildCat. Rizzi said that model will be ready for testing early next year.
The Cheetah was built with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, the company said in a statement on Thursday.
Boston Dynamics is a robotics company that specializes in developing advanced rough-terrain robots. The company began as a spin-off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where the company founders did developed the first robots that ran and maneuvered like animals.
